Sam's Blog Entry no. 1

Hi, I'm Sam. I'm 14 years old and the youngest of our group. Today we went back to Zakhira. This trip was focused around the painting project, renovating the Asha medical centre. We had pretty much done the walls with the bare colours, which were the frames for our murals.
During the first half of the day, half of the team went prayer walking in the slum. The team prayed for a very sick woman who was recovering from an operation. Unfortunately she wasn't getting better and could barely eat, so she was painfully thin.

Today me, Sue, Libby and Andrew (my dad) carried on with the murals, which are being painted onto the rooms in which the children play and go to school in. On the first room we are completing a jungle scene, the concept designed by a member of St Stephen's School. On the walls of the other room we are painting Noah's Ark. Val did some very artistic animals, she had the talent of creating figures freehand and her turtles were particularly impressive. I mainly did the sketches, and Sue was very good at outlines and precised paintings, something that I am not so good at. Dad faithfully did the leaves.

The first thing I noticed when I first entered Zakhira was how cute and playful the children were. The thing they love more than anything is having their picture taken! If you have a camera on you it wont take long before 30 odd slum children are assembled in front of you, posing with their brothers and sisters. These children don't often have good healthy fun, because they mainly have jobs such as rag picking, or scrap metal collecting, or bending aluminium strips into industrial shapes. For a whole days work they receive about seven rupees - the equivalent of about 10p.

I am looking forward to tomorrow as we will be finishing the murals and showing the children who I'm sure will love it. All for now, Namaste! Sam